ade the great house
nearer than Cross Hall. They could get her there in little over a mile.
But how to get her there? They must find a door on which to carry her.
First a hurdle was suggested, and then Dick was sent galloping up to
the house for a carriage. In the meantime she was carried to a
labourer's cottage by the roadside on a hurdle, and there the party was
joined by Sir Simon and Mr. Houghton.

"It's all your fault," said the husband, coming up to Price as though
he meant to strike him with his whip. "Part of it is no doubt, sir,"
said Price, looking his assailant full in the face, but almost sobbing
as he spoke, "and I'm very unhappy about it." Then the husband went and
hung over his wife, but his wife, when she saw him, found it convenient
to faint again.

At about two o'clock the cortege with the carriage reached the great
house. Sir Simon, after expressions of deep sorrow had, of course, gone
on after his hounds. Mr. Knox, as belonging to Manor Cross, and Price,
and, of course, the doctor, with Mr. Houghton and Mr. Houghton's groom,
accompanied the carriage. When they got to the door all the ladies were
there to receive them. "I don't think we want to see anything more of
you," said Mr. Houghton to the farmer. The poor man turned round and
went away home, alone, feeling himself to be thoroughly disgraced.
"After all," he said to himself, "if you come to fault it was she nigh
killed me, not me her. How was I to know she didn't know nothing about
it!"

"Now, Mary, I think you'll own that I was right," Lord George said to
his wife, as soon as the sufferer had been put quietly to bed.

"Ladies don't always break their arms," said Mary.

"It might have been you as well as Mrs. Houghton."

"As I didn't go, you need not scold me, George."

"But you were discontented because you were prevented," said he,
determined to have the last word.

CHAPTER IX.

MRS. HOUGHTON.

Lady Sarah, who was generally regarded as the arbiter of the very
slender hospitalities exercised at Manor Cross, was not at all well
pleased at being forced to entertain Mrs. Houghton, whom she especially
disliked; but, circumstanced as they were, there was no alternative.
She had been put to bed with a dislocated arm, and had already suffered
much in having it reduced, before the matter could be even discussed.
And then it was of course felt that she could not be turned out of the
house. She was not only generally hurt, but she wa